Former President Abdulla Yameen said last night that the issue of the continuously rising dollar rate in the Maldives cannot be resolved by silencing the public.
Speaking at a ceremony in Thinadhoo City to mark the 60th anniversary of the island's resettlement, Yameen asserted that attempts to fix the dollar crisis by gagging citizens and preventing them from discussing the issue would prove futile.
"Are these issues solved by silencing people and stopping discussions on major national concerns like the dollar crisis under the guise of national interest? That is not how it works, is it?" Yameen said.
Yameen noted that public anxiety would be eased if the Finance Minister and the Governor of the central bank stepped forward to explain their strategy for resolving the dollar shortage.
However, he remarked that instead of providing solutions, the government is introducing legal amendments to ban certain activities, which he warned is exacerbating the situation rather than fixing it.
"Let the Finance Minister and the Governor of the central bank come out and explain how this will be resolved. We would welcome that, and it would bring peace of mind to the public. But instead of explaining, simply banning everything through legislation does not mean we are losing the problem. In fact, it does nothing but add fuel to the fire they are trying to extinguish," Yameen said.
Last week, the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee passed an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Act to prohibit the publication of black market dollar rates that exceed the official exchange rate set by the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA).
The bill stipulates that if a legal entity or a registered business publishes black market exchange rates, they could face fines ranging from MVR 100,000 to MVR 5 million.
Furthermore, promoting or advertising transactions at rates higher than the official rate or band set by the central bank will be deemed an offense. This violation carries a fine between MVR 25,000 and MVR 500,000.
These legal changes, which effectively silence the media on the issue, come after Economic Minister Mohamed Saeed claimed that news reports were contributing to the hike in dollar prices. These restrictive clauses were not included in the original bill when it was first submitted by the government.
The government’s objective in amending the Foreign Exchange Act was to abolish the discretionary USD 500 currency conversion requirement per tourist at resorts, replacing it with a mandatory requirement for resorts to convert 20 percent of their total foreign currency revenue.
